Artifact Report

Chapter 254 Where is Miss Mai Minghe Jones?

The toy company's conference room is easy to find. It's just behind the second large open space and is a neat rectangle.

When Mai Minghe looked inside through the glass door, he realized that he had come to the right place.

Countless faintly yellowed pieces of paper and documents were scattered on the conference table, several large booklets were spread out, and the whiteboard was covered with handwriting, schematics, and several "???" marks left by a bright red marker - on the other wall of the conference room, there was a wall full of employee portraits.

There are four rows of photos, with five photos in each row; just like the photos used by actors in auditions, each photo is as big as an A4 paper.

In at least a dozen photos, faces were crossed out with big red crosses.

When Mai Minghe quietly pushed open the door, he subconsciously held his breath - as if by not inhaling, he could avoid falling into the bad luck implied by the conference room.

There are five chairs, corresponding to three notebooks and two laptops on the table, which may indicate that there are five people attending the meeting.

In a company with at least 20 office employees, only five attend the weekly meeting...

The remaining words on the whiteboard were hurried, flustered, and unstable, as if they might crash into the previous word at any time and leave their arms and legs all over the floor.

1. The last person to see Miss Jones

(Where, when, what was she doing, what was she saying, where could Miss Jones be hiding?
The person writing suddenly stopped writing (the bracket was still missing the second half), and the last question mark seemed to cross the sky and fly diagonally to the edge of the whiteboard.

If the same handwriting had not appeared again after a distance, with a small font saying - "There seems to be no Jones in the conference room! Conference room = safe?" - Mai Minghe would have really thought that the person who wrote it had an accident.

I guess the person finished writing a sentence and suddenly remembered that he should check the meeting room...etc.

Should she get checked out too?

Mai Minghe quickly looked around, pulled out a chair, bent down, and glanced into the dark and dim space under the conference table.

She breathed a sigh of relief.

She was overthinking it. There was no one under the table, only a child squatting under the table.

Just as Mai Minghe straightened up, her scalp suddenly exploded; she stepped back hastily, her back hitting the door of the conference room with a "bang". She let out a scream and fell into the silent air, landing on the floor.

She breathed rapidly and stared at the dark carpet under the table. After a few seconds, she leaned over and took another look - it was not a child.

It was just a doll that looked like a child, with its limbs twisted and made into a squatting position, and the corners of its mouth raised to form a dull smile.

Mai Minghe was reluctant to touch it, yet also reluctant to be in the same room with it. After a few seconds of hesitation, she finally gave in to the latter decision. If she wanted to see the writing on the whiteboard, she would have to turn around, facing the conference table. The image of the child's doll slowly crawling out of her mind was more unbearable than anything else. She gritted her teeth, grabbed the doll, and threw it out of the meeting room.

2. How many employees were originally in our company’s third-floor office, and who were they?
Who are the employees who are still alive now?

Can all records be found on the HR roster?

Patricia
Osho

Leremon
eugene

clean
Laura

Six names in total? On second thought, that makes sense.

There were five people sitting at the conference table, and one was responsible for presiding over the meeting - although it was more like "emergency operation" than "presiding over the meeting".

By ticking the box, does it mean that these six people can be found on the employee roster? But why do we need to confirm this?

Isn't their problem that employees are disappearing one by one?

Mai Minghe soon discovered that his initial guess was correct; because there was a printed paper on the table, which was the company's employee list.

There were a total of twenty names on the list. She glanced through the employee list and was about to put it down when she suddenly stopped.

The six names on the whiteboard were indeed on the employee list, all of them having been employed for at least two or three years, and all of them had been ticked off. When they had held the meeting, they must have made a point of confirming that every person in attendance was the person who was supposed to be there at that time.

But Mai Minghe felt that there was a problem with this list.

She thought blankly for a while, then her eyes returned to the whiteboard. Suddenly, she understood.

…There was no “Jones” on the staff list.

It is unlikely that someone removed her name after she disappeared, because apart from the six people on the whiteboard, the names of the other missing colleagues are still there.

So…who is Jones?
Mai Minghe narrowed his eyes and moved closer to the whiteboard.

The words after "3." were erased, leaving only a ghostly and vague shadow. Mai Minghe didn't know if it was her imagination, but she felt that what was written after 3 were exactly the same four words - "Who is Jones?"... Could it be that the six people who held the weekly meeting had made the same discovery as Mai Minghe in this conference room?

Shouldn't they know best who their colleagues are?

She really couldn't figure it out; she didn't know what all this had to do with her escape from the third floor - but Mai Minghe could only follow the thread she had grasped and continue to pull it down.

4. What are the company’s products?
Including products in the past history
The area below 4 is blank, with nothing written on it, probably because this part of the information cannot be written on the whiteboard. The picture album that Mai Minghe saw on the table was the product album of this toy company in recent years. In the blank spaces of the album, someone wrote the product names he remembered in an almost frantic handwriting.

Strange……

They seemed unsure if they were all colleagues, or if there was a person named Jones among them, or even where Jones was. Most of their colleagues seemed to be missing, yet they were trying to identify what products the company had released.
Mai Minghe's mind was full of "whys", and he was almost dizzy from the questions in his head.

She skipped over the laptop on the table that had long been out of battery, opened the nearest notebook, and turned to the last part with writing.

1. Clean

Around 2:30 this afternoon, in the tea room

Jones: "I'm going to find a place to hide on the third floor. Come find me if you can."

Jie: “What are you talking about?”

Jones: "I won't cheat. I'll hide on the third floor. The stairs, outside the window, or in the ventilation duct don't count as the third floor. They are not my hiding places, so they can be removed from the third floor."

Jie: "Wait a minute, what do you mean? Do you know why the stairs disappeared? Do you know how to get out? Where did the others go?"

Jones: "Aren't you supposed to have your weekly meeting this afternoon? Let's discuss the battle plan together, and then you can come to me together. Or you can come to me one by one, whichever you prefer."

Jie: "I said, I don't understand what you are talking about!"

(Note that during the conversation, Jai was completely unaware of Jones's identity!!)
The sentence in brackets has two exclamation marks and three heavy lines under it.

Jones: "Little Carter and the others couldn't find me before. I hope you have better luck than them. After all, the game of finding someone has a time limit."

Jie: "Wait, do you know where Little Carter and the others went? Did you ask them to look for you too?"

Jones: “It’s started.”

(Jones leaves the tea room and Jie chases him out the door, but no one is there)

Mai Minghe frowned.

Thank goodness someone took detailed notes of the discussions at the meeting.

So... the toy company employee, or rather, the "toy company employee" created by the nest, also experienced what she is currently experiencing: the third floor became a closed cement brick with no way out.

Among the employees of the toy company, there is a new person named "Jones" whose identity is unknown; they must play hide-and-seek with Jones and find Jones's hiding place on the third floor.

It is not known what benefits will be gained by finding them out; but if they cannot be found out, the obvious outcome is that they will all disappear one by one - so that in an office of twenty people, only six people will be left.

Mai Minghe turned another page of his notes.

The content of the next page pierced her retina, as if it had hit her unexpectedly, temporarily dislocating her thoughts.

2. There are six participants in the weekly meeting.

We printed out photos of all the employees and put them up on the wall. We marked any missing ones with a red cross.

Since no one could remember what Jones looked like, they had to use the process of elimination.

Mai Minghe read the words for a while, then turned his head and stared at the photo on the wall for a while.

There are four rows in total, five seats in each row, for a total of twenty people.

But fifteen of the photos were marked with red crosses.

　I've been a vegetarian for quite a while now, over a year now, right? But since I'm too lazy to plan my meals and don't like spinach, I seriously suspect I'm iron deficient...? It's been three days now, and I'm feeling weak, shaky, and just plain bad. If I take an iron supplement tomorrow and it doesn't improve, I'm going to see a doctor.

　　Speaking of being a vegetarian... I didn't know the brand Ma Liu Ji before, but when I saw it was on sale, I just bought three packs.

　　Now I understand it... When I think about the fact that I actually contributed 12 yuan to that mother and son, I feel so uncomfortable! I feel like I have let down Big S and my childhood.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)